health insurance

“Currently insurers in New Mexico can charge women up to 20 percent more than men for individual and small group health insurance plans. This is unacceptable…,” Richardson said Tuesday in a press release announcing that he had signed Senate Bill 148.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Nancy Rodriguez, will eventually eliminate gender as a health insurance rating factor by [...]

The rate hikes planned for individual policy holders of Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico health insurance  are on hold pending a public hearing. The hearing was ordered by New Mexico’s Public Regulation Commission after it received “numerous complaints,” the Albuquerque Journal reported today.

About 18,000 New Mexicans who purchase individual Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance plans are about to see a 29.5  percent increase in their payments.  Another 2,700 individuals will see a 10 percent increase, and “a handful” in a couple of other plans won’t have an increase. Another individual insurance plan provider, Presbyterian Health Plan, will [...]

The state officially has closed off enrollment to small employers who aren’t already part of a program that helps tens of thousands of New Mexicans afford health insurance by paying part of the cost of monthly premiums.
Last month the New Mexico Human Services Department stopped accepting applications from individuals wanting to enroll in the State [...]

Now is the time to look and see the poverty that surrounds us all. Now, as the tenor of the national debate gets vicious and people shout louder about “socialized medicine” without acknowledging that the current system of underinsurance costs us all billions and takes an untold toll on million of Americans who didn’t choose to be sick.

Six-in-ten Hispanic adults in the U.S. who are neither citizens nor legal permanent residents are without health insurance, the Pew Hispanic Center reports. But an estimated 28 percent of Hispanic adults who are citizens or legal permanent residents don’t have health insurance either. That’s compared with 17 percent of the overall U.S. adult population who [...]

U.S. Senator Tom Udall and eight other freshmen today urged Congress to pass health care reform bill. “Maintaining the status quo is the coward’s way out,” Udall said.

Ojo Sarco resident and rural health policy guru Carol Miller — who served on the Clinton Health Care Task Force in the ’90s  – wrote an op-ed in the influential Washington D.C. paper Roll Call about health care reform.

Once again, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is in the middle of some political wrangling. In 2007, an expansion of the bill passed the Senate and House but was vetoed by President George W. Bush. The House couldn’t muster the two-thirds votes necessary to override the veto.
This year, things aren’t looking as good [...]

New Mexicans want more oil drilling and nuclear energy. So says the Albuquerque Journal, which released poll results related to energy in an article yesterday. There are sharp partisan differences in the numbers, with Republicans overwhelmingly favoring increased drilling off-shore and the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge plus expansion of nuclear power. But Democrats are in [...]